Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

At a press conference on Wednesday, the city announced that the Secret Service will control a 12-block “enhanced security zone” extending from Bay Street to Oglethorpe Avenue between Whitaker and Drayton streets.

A number of items – including folding chairs, coolers, backpacks, purses, tents and alcoholic beverages – will not be allowed to enter the controlled zone.

The selling and consumption of alcohol will still be permitted within the control zone, but only in to-go cups provided by the bars and restaurants within its borders.

Pence will arrive on Air Force Two at Georgia Air National Guard at 10 a.m. Saturday, according to a White House official speaking on background.

Pence will join DeLoach on the balcony of City Hall and later walk down Bull Street to celebrate with local leaders, parade officials and the citizens of Savannah.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation last month opened a new inquiry into the sheriff’s conduct, according to WALB News in Albany, after a tipster came forward with allegations that the sheriff had installed an illegal recording device in the attorney-client room at the jail.

A GBI spokeswoman on Monday said the sheriff turned himself in Friday after being charged with 66 counts of eavesdropping and illegal surveillance charges and one count of violation of oath of office.

Today from 11:30 to 1 PM, a screening of Intervention will be held at the Georgia State Capitol in Room 341.

State Rep. Matt Dubnik (R-Gainesville) passed his first bill, HB 784, creating a license plate to raise funds for waterfowl and their habitat. From the Gainesville Times,

Dubnik passed his true first bill out of the legislature earlier this month, but that bill was a minor piece of legislation that he had been asked to carry by House leadership and that didn’t affect his district, he said.

“I will probably remember this one as my first one,” Dubnik said, laughing, about HB 784.

Dubnik has been involved with Ducks Unlimited for the past 15 years, including a 6-year stint as head of fundraising for the group in Georgia. Each year, the environmental conservation group raises more than $2 million in the state.

“More than 90 percent of members claim to be hunters, but we’re not a political activist group around hunting,” Dubnik said on Wednesday, March 15. “We certainly embrace our hunting heritage, but we’re in the land conservation business.”

Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee Chairman Tyler Harper, R-Ocilla, said it was the committee’s intention to get the bill to the floor quickly.

“We did have this in subcommittee and we did take testimony in subcommittee, so my plan is to get you to present your plan before the full committee, and we’ll move through it quite rapidly,” Harper said during a hearing this week.

“HB 879 achieves an expanded public notice when coal ash ponds are being drained into the local waters within a community, by requiring that an ad be placed in the legal organ in that community once the commencing of the coal ash dewatering — as it’s called, or pond draining — has begun,” Jones said. “And the purpose of that is just to give the locals the opportunity to know what’s going on in their communities.”

A raft of legislation aimed at controlling Fulton County tax assessments passed both chambers of the General Assembly, according to Patch.com.

Senate Bill 317 and House Bills 707, 708, 710, 711 and 712 have all cleared both chambers, and will now move onto to Governor Nathan Deal for his signature or rejection.

The bills would expand current protections for the Fulton County portion of property tax bills. The bills would also add protections for the Fulton County School Board portion of property tax bills and portions for the cities of Roswell, Johns Creek, Alpharetta, Milton and Mountain Park.

New homestead exemptions in those cities and for the school system would freeze homeowners’ tax assessments at the 2016 level. It would allow increases up to 3 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is less (the city of Sandy Springs already has this in place). The homestead exemptions would remain in place as long as homeowners own their homes. The more current assessment would take effect and become the new “frozen” level once a home is sold.

Senator Fran Millar (R-Dunwoody) proposed an amendment that would prevent local elected officials from receiving a pay raise they voted on until after their reelection, according to the AJC.

“If you’re in office when the pay raise is approved, you can’t get it till the term expires,” Millar, whose district includes part of DeKalb, told members of the House Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday. “Nobody should get a raise during the middle of their term.”

The amendment applies to all Georgia counties and says that commissioners who vote on their own raises cannot make them effective during their current terms. The 3 percent raise that DeKalb commissioners approved for CEO Mike Thurmond also would be delayed until 2021.

The legislation, Senate Bill 403, would replace the state’s 16-year-old electronic voting machines with a system that creates a paper backup to ensure accuracy.

“We want to have paper ballots that deliver for voters more confidence,” said state Rep. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth. “The public recognizes that the best-in-class technology for voting is a combination of technology with paper so that you have a verifiable, recountable, physically retallyable ballot.”

The legislation is on track for a vote in the full House of Representatives after the committee approved it on a voice vote. If it passes there, it would return to the Senate for further consideration.

Columbia County public schools Superintendent Dr. Sandra Carraway asked the county Board of Education to consider options to enhance school safety, according to the Augusta Chronicle.

She proposed the options to the board at its meeting Tuesday night – the day before planned observances at the county’s five public high schools commemorating the fatal Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Fla.

Carraway said she met recently with about 15 Columbia County sheriff’s deputies on another matter, but while waiting for all the officers to arrive at that meeting, conversation among those gathered turned to school safety.

But when she asked deputies how many of them felt teachers should be armed, all the deputies raised their hands.

While school-system officers patrol the county’s elementary campuses, no officers are stationed permanently at those 18 schools. The district now has eight officers – one posted at each of the five high schools and three at middle schools.

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